Anyone can post here - it's "open". In fact, I encourage participation in sharing of knowledge. I'd like more discussion.

Once I shift from this position of having two jobs, to one job - I'm going to restart my magazine. I have some old connections that might need some rekindling - but I have a secret power:

I'm always invited to the best parties.

As far as simulators - this is something "new" to me. I haven't used any game theory to "look at events". This is something very interesting to me. Once I get my work flow setup for the day - i'll put some time into looking at simulators and play around.

3557791151_885f645d7eThis snippet bears repeating: “The company is asking for an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full.” Via Huffington Post:

A Wall Street giant, Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for “challenging corrections budgets.” In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.

Corrections Corporation has been a swiftly growing business, with revenues expanding more than fivefold since the mid-1990s. The company capitalized on the expansion of state prison systems in the ’80s and ’90s at the height of the so-called ‘war on drugs’. During the past 10 years, it has found new opportunity in the business of locking up undocumented immigrants, as the federal government has contracted with private companies in an aggressive immigrant-detention campaign.

A series of studies has cast doubt on the private prison industry’s main selling point: efficiency. Research across numerous states has shown that the promised savings from private prisons can be illusory at best. What’s more, many civil liberties advocates question why a profit motive should be tied to incarceration policies, raising concerns that cutting costs could have an adverse effect on public safety.

Ariz. police say they are prepared as War College warns military must prep for unrest; IMF warns of economic riots

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Wednesday of economy-related riots and unrest in various global markets if the financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are hurt by credit constraints and rising unemployment.

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., both said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson brought up a worst-case scenario as he pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September. Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, said that might even require a declaration of martial law, the two noted.

State and local police in Arizona say they have broad plans to deal with social unrest, including trouble resulting from economic distress. The security and police agencies declined to give specifics, but said they would employ existing and generalized emergency responses to civil unrest that arises for any reason.

The conventional view is that new traits can only evolve if DNA itself changes in some way. The classic way to do this is by mutating the genetic code itself. More recently, researchers have discovered that molecules can clamp onto DNA and prevent some parts of the sequence from being read, leading to genetic changes through a process that is known as epigenetics.

Yeast breaks the mould. In challenging conditions, it can instantly churn out hundreds of brand-new and potentially lifesaving proteins from its DNA, all without changing the genes in any way. Instead, yeast alters the way genes are read. The tiny fungi convert a special type of protein called Sup35 into a prion.

Sup35 normally plays an important role in the protein production line. It makes sure that the ribosomes within cells, in which the proteins are built, start and stop reading an RNA strand at just the right points to generate a certain protein.

When Sup35 transforms into a prion, it no longer performs that role. With this quality control missing, the entire gene sequence is read as it spools through the ribosome. This generates new proteins from sections of RNA that are usually ignored.

The result is that the yeast generates a hotchpotch of brand-new proteins without changing its DNA in any way. Within that mix of new proteins could be some that are crucial for survival.

While "cloaking" technology may have once been limited exclusively to the realm of science fiction, regular Gizmag readers will know that it is now finding its way into real life - just within the past few years, scientists have demonstrated various experimental cloaking systems that prevent small objects from being seen, and in one case, from being heard. Such invisibility systems involve the use of metamaterials, which are man-made materials that exhibit optical qualities not found in nature. These are able to effectively bend light around an object, instead of allowing it to strike the object directly. Now, mathematicians from the University of Manchester are proposing technology based on the same principles, that would allow buildings to become "invisible" to earthquakes.

A team led by Dr. William Parnell is proposing that buildings in earthquake-prone regions could be surrounded with pressurized rubber at their bases. This could theoretically keep the elastic waves traveling through the ground from registering the presence of the building, instead simply passing around either side of it.

"We showed theoretically that pre-stressing a naturally available material - rubber - leads to a cloaking effect from a specific type of elastic wave," said Parnell. "Our team is now working hard on more general theories and to understand how this theory can be realized in practice ... If the theory can be scaled up to larger objects then it could be used to create cloaks to protect buildings and structures, or perhaps more realistically to protect very important specific parts of those structures."

While building rubber bumpers around all the buildings in one town might be a little over-ambitious, it has been suggested that the technology could be focused on structures such as electric pylons, nuclear power plants, and government offices.

A SONAR image of a large mystery object deep below the surface of Loch Ness has netted boat skipper Marcus Atkinson the Best Nessie Sighting of The Year Award — the first time in several years it has been presented by bookmaker William Hill.

Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”

^ The above store about companies/marketing/secrets is pretty interesting:

Quote:

A similar scene played out in dozens of other smelly homes. The reason Febreze wasn’t selling, the marketers realized, was that people couldn’t detect most of the bad smells in their lives. If you live with nine cats, you become desensitized to their scents. If you smoke cigarettes, eventually you don’t smell smoke anymore. Even the strongest odors fade with constant exposure. That’s why Febreze was a failure. The product’s cue — the bad smells that were supposed to trigger daily use — was hidden from the people who needed it the most. And Febreze’s reward (an odorless home) was meaningless to someone who couldn’t smell offensive scents in the first place.

Quote:

P.& G. employed a Harvard Business School professor to analyze Febreze’s ad campaigns. They collected hours of footage of people cleaning their homes and watched tape after tape, looking for clues that might help them connect Febreze to people’s daily habits. When that didn’t reveal anything, they went into the field and conducted more interviews. A breakthrough came when they visited a woman in a suburb near Scottsdale, Ariz., who was in her 40s with four children. Her house was clean, though not compulsively tidy, and didn’t appear to have any odor problems; there were no pets or smokers. To the surprise of everyone, she loved Febreze.

“I use it every day,” she said.

“What smells are you trying to get rid of?” a researcher asked.

“I don’t really use it for specific smells,” the woman said. “I use it for normal cleaning — a couple of sprays when I’m done in a room.”

The researchers followed her around as she tidied the house. In the bedroom, she made her bed, tightened the sheet’s corners, then sprayed the comforter with Febreze. In the living room, she vacuumed, picked up the children’s shoes, straightened the coffee table, then sprayed Febreze on the freshly cleaned carpet.

“It’s nice, you know?” she said. “Spraying feels like a little minicelebration when I’m done with a room.” At the rate she was going, the team estimated, she would empty a bottle of Febreze every two weeks.

When they got back to P.& G.’s headquarters, the researchers watched their videotapes again. Now they knew what to look for and saw their mistake in scene after scene. Cleaning has its own habit loops that already exist. In one video, when a woman walked into a dirty room (cue), she started sweeping and picking up toys (routine), then she examined the room and smiled when she was done (reward). In another, a woman scowled at her unmade bed (cue), proceeded to straighten the blankets and comforter (routine) and then sighed as she ran her hands over the freshly plumped pillows (reward). P.& G. had been trying to create a whole new habit with Febreze, but what they really needed to do was piggyback on habit loops that were already in place. The marketers needed to position Febreze as something that came at the end of the cleaning ritual, the reward, rather than as a whole new cleaning routine.

Anyone can post here - it's "open". In fact, I encourage participation in sharing of knowledge. I'd like more discussion.

Once I shift from this position of having two jobs, to one job - I'm going to restart my magazine. I have some old connections that might need some rekindling - but I have a secret power:

I'm always invited to the best parties.

As far as simulators - this is something "new" to me. I haven't used any game theory to "look at events". This is something very interesting to me. Once I get my work flow setup for the day - i'll put some time into looking at simulators and play around.

Thanks for the link/mindshare Ody.

I posted this in another thread. What if we voted for an algorithm instead of a person for president? He or she can be whatever garbage that "we the people" can conceive. Max Headroom for President? Why have elections when we can change our presidents mind every 90 days with our own fickle indecisiveness? Talk about free enterprise politics!

I posted this in another thread. What if we voted for an algorithm instead of a person for president? He or she can be whatever garbage that "we the people" can conceive. Max Headroom for President? Why have elections when we can change our presidents mind every 90 days with our own fickle indecisiveness? Talk about free enterprise politics!

H
1:25 PM (2 hours ago)
Cop spends weeks to trick an 18-year-old into possession and sale of a gram of pot
by Mark Frauenfelder

More fun from the self-loathing society: This American Life had a show about how young female undercover cops infiltrated a high school and flirted with boys to entrap them into selling pot, so they could charge them with felonies and destroy their lives at an early age.

Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other.

One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn't smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn't want the money -- he got it for her as a present.

A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrest 31 students -- including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Now Justin has a felony hanging over his head.

Sick: Young, Undercover Cops Flirted With Students to Trick Them Into Selling Pot (Via Aurich Lawson)

According to an article in German in the Ithaka Journal, a German university study has found significant concentrations of glyphosate in the urine samples of city dwellers. The analysis of the urine samples apparently found that all had concentrations of glyphosate at 5 to 20-fold the limit for drinking water. As well as being used increasingly widely in food production, glyphosate-based weedkillers often also get sprayed onto railway lines, urban pavements and roadsides (www.ithaka-journal.net).

Disturbingly, the Ithaka Journal reports (in our translation), “The address of the university labs, which did the research, the data and the evaluation of the research method is known to the editors. Because of significant pressure by agrochemical representatives and the fear that the work of the lab could be influenced, the complete analytical data will only be published in the course of this year.” (www.ithaka-journal.net)

News of this study comes not long after the publication of a study confirming glyphosate was contaminating groundwater. Last year also saw the publication of two US Geological Survey studies which consistently found glyphosate in streams, rain and even air in agricultural areas of the US …

Close to 1,500 years ago, indians living in what is now Quito, Ecuador buried their most revered dead in 16-meter-deep tombs. An ancient alcoholic beverage was commonly included in these burial vaults. Now, by examining the clay vessels used to ferment and store this brew, a team of South American researchers has managed to not only recover the microbes the indians used to ferment the ancient beverage, they've actually revived them...and they're unlike any species they've ever seen.

The strange discovery by quantum physicists at the University of California Santa Barbara means that an object you can see in front of you may exist simultaneously in a parallel universe -- a multi-state condition that has scientists theorizing that traveling through time may be much more than just the plaything of science fiction writers.

And it's all because of a tiny bit of metal -- a "paddle" about the width of a human hair, an item that is incredibly small but still something you can see with the naked eye.

UC Santa Barbara's Andrew Cleland cooled that paddle in a refrigerator, dimmed the lights and, under a special bell jar, sucked out all the air to eliminate vibrations. He then plucked it like a tuning fork and noted that it moved and stood still at the same time.

That sounds contradictory, and it's nearly impossible to understand if your last name isn't Einstein. But it actually happened. It's a freaky fact that's at the heart of quantum mechanics.

The conventional view is that new traits can only evolve if DNA itself changes in some way. The classic way to do this is by mutating the genetic code itself. More recently, researchers have discovered that molecules can clamp onto DNA and prevent some parts of the sequence from being read, leading to genetic changes through a process that is known as epigenetics.

Yeast breaks the mould. In challenging conditions, it can instantly churn out hundreds of brand-new and potentially lifesaving proteins from its DNA, all without changing the genes in any way. Instead, yeast alters the way genes are read. The tiny fungi convert a special type of protein called Sup35 into a prion.

Sup35 normally plays an important role in the protein production line. It makes sure that the ribosomes within cells, in which the proteins are built, start and stop reading an RNA strand at just the right points to generate a certain protein.

When Sup35 transforms into a prion, it no longer performs that role. With this quality control missing, the entire gene sequence is read as it spools through the ribosome. This generates new proteins from sections of RNA that are usually ignored.

The result is that the yeast generates a hotchpotch of brand-new proteins without changing its DNA in any way. Within that mix of new proteins could be some that are crucial for survival.

The January issue of NatGeo went into this with their special on twins. It was very fascinating. Warning: If you are a Jenny McCarthy wacko who thinks vaccines are bad, do not read.